The spatial structure of ecological communities on tropical coral reefs across seascapes and geographies have historically been poorly understood. Here we addressed this for the first time using spatially expansive and thematically resolved benthic community data collected around five uninhabited central Pacific oceanic islands, spanning 6° latitude and 17° longitude. Using towed‐diver digital image surveys over ~140 linear km of shallow (8–20 m depth) tropical reef, we highlight the autocorrelated nature of coral reef seascapes. Benthic functional groups and hard coral morphologies displayed significant spatial clustering (positive autocorrelation) up to kilometre‐scales around all islands, in some instances dominating entire sections of coastline. The scale and strength of these autocorrelation patterns showed differences across geographies, but patterns were more similar between islands in closer proximity and of a similar size. For example, crustose coralline algae (CCA) were clustered up to scales of 0.3 km at neighbouring Howland and Baker Islands and macroalgae were spatially clustered at scales up to ~3 km at both neighbouring Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. Of all the functional groups, macroalgae had the highest levels of spatial clustering across geographies at the finest resolution of our data (100 m). There were several cases where the upper scale at which benthic community members showed evidence of spatial clustering correlated highly with the upper scales at which concurrent gradients in physical environmental drivers were spatially clustered. These correlations were stronger for surface wave energy than subsurface temperature (regardless of benthic group) and turf algae and CCA had the closest alignments in scale with wave energy across functional groups and geographies. Our findings suggest such physical drivers not only limit or promote the abundance of various benthic competitors on coral reefs, but also play a key role in governing their spatial scaling properties across seascapes.

中文翻译：

---

珊瑚礁底栖生物群落的空间尺度特性

历史上人们对跨海景和地理区域的热带珊瑚礁上的生态群落的空间结构了解甚少。在这里，我们首次使用空间扩展和主题解析的底栖生物数据来首次解决这个问题，这些数据是围绕五个无人居住的中太平洋大洋群岛收集的，它们横跨纬度6度和经度17度。通过在约140线性公里的浅海（8–20 m深度）热带礁上进行拖曳潜水员数字图像调查，我们强调了珊瑚礁海景的自相关性质。底栖动物的功能群和坚硬的珊瑚形态在所有岛屿周围都表现出明显的空间聚类（正自相关），直至几千米，在某些情况下主导着整个海岸线。这些自相关模式的规模和强度在不同地区之间显示出差异，但是在距离更近且大小相似的岛之间，模式更为相似。例如，在邻近的豪兰岛和贝克群岛，硬壳珊瑚藻类（CCA）聚集在0.3 km的范围内，而在邻近的金曼礁和帕尔米拉环礁，大型藻类在空间上聚集在〜3 km的范围内。在所有功能组中，大型藻类在我们数据的最佳分辨率（100 m）下具有跨地理位置的最高水平的空间聚类。在许多情况下，底栖动物群落成员的上部尺度显示出空间聚类的证据与物理环境驱动因素中的并发梯度在空间上聚集的上部尺度高度相关。对于表面波能量，这些相关性强于地下温度（与底栖生物无关），并且草坪藻类和CCA在各个功能组和地区与波浪能的尺度最接近。我们的研究结果表明，这种物理驱动力不仅限制或促进了各种底栖生物在珊瑚礁上的丰富，而且在控制其在整个海景中的空间缩放特性方面也起着关键作用。